Marketwire now includes SEO-friendly headlines in URL of news releases

Marketwire recently changed the URL structure of client press releases on Marketwire.com so that the headline appears in the URL. This change affects all releases, past and present, regardless of the product or distribution, at no extra cost to our clients. Old links are automatically redirected to the new pages using SEO-friendly redirects, thereby retaining and potentially improving their page rank.

“What we have effectively done is help major search engines find our clients’ releases on our site by making it easier for them to understand what these pages are about,” said Aaron Adamson, director of product management at Marketwire. “The more information we provide to search engines, the more likely they are to consume it and improve rankings and send more, relevant traffic to client releases on Marketwire.com.”

The old URL structure for news releases on Marketwire.com combined the name of the company, the stock ticker information and the release ID number. Clients reported a good deal of success with the old structure. Yet, if the link was shared through email or indexed in search engines, it could not quickly communicate – at first glance — what the article was about.

By changing the URL structure to include the headline of a news release, readers will understand the content of that link prior to clicking on it. In addition, each article now achieves a “content trifecta,” which means news releases can be considered more relevant when headline, title and URL are aligned.

“One of the biggest benefits of the new URL structure is that it optimizes our clients’ news releases to make it more visible to search engines,” Adamson explained. “Although there are few guarantees with SEO, we will do our best to optimize client releases by adhering to the latest search-engine best practices with respect to URL nomenclature.”

The URL change is also universal:

Both new and old releases benefit. Old releases will retain and can potentially improve their page rank with the change because all old links are automatically redirected, effectively telling search engines that releases have been “permanently moved.” By executing the redirect in this fashion, we can ensure that the authority of links to our client pages is preserved and passed to the old page at its new URL location.

Changes work across multiple search engines. Whether your releases ranked well in Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Baidu, Ask, AOL or any of the popular search engines, they will maintain their good standing, if not perform better, due to this change.

Regardless of the product you purchase today or the option you chose three years ago, this change will eventually benefit your release.

Marketwire staff is extremely excited about this development as we strive to serve our clients better. For any clarification about how the URL change will benefit your business or how you can take advantage of increased search engine optimization through news releases, please contact us.